For 25 years, a small group of dedicated people from the African American community have worked countless hours to make sure that children, young adults and their parents are educated on how to effectively navigate and hopefully stay out of the criminal justice system as organizers of the annual youth and law forum.
The brainchild of Judges LeRoy McCullough, Charles V. Johnson and Norma Huggins, the youth and law forum has brought together youth, parents, and people who work in all areas of the criminal justice system – including law enforcement officers, judges, attorneys, and prosecutors – under one roof to build bridges and engage in dialogues that organizers hope will improve police community relations and how African American youth and law enforcement interact with one another.
“When we first started the youth and law forum, we were having some of the same problems then as we’re having now as far as police community relations were concerned and the way in which police were interacting with African American youth,” said Judge Johnson. “We discussed starting something here at our church [First A.M.E.] that would train our youth on how they should behave out in the community.”
Given the racial climate at the time, and the growing distrust between the African American community and law enforcement due to a number of incidents involving the police and young people from the community, the judges were determined to implore their collective resources to help address the issue.
“At that time, I had two sons that were juveniles and I had no intention of letting them, or their friends, or any of my nieces or nephews become statistics,” said Judge McCullough. “So the question was what do you do to make a difference? We can certainly talk about the behavior of police, we could certainly talk about the behavior of other people but it’s not enough. So our decision was to come together as a community to make a difference and to see if we could change some of that behavior.”
Hosted by First A.M.E. Church of Seattle (FAME), the forum was a natural fit for the progressive nature of a congregation that has always been on the cutting edge of civic engagement, civil rights and efforts to better the community.
“This church has never been foreign to these types of activities,” said Rev. Dr. Carey G. Anderson, pastor of FAME.
“Whether it’s sit-ins during voting rights, better housing and other types of social ills that we had to address, we’ve always been involved with it,” Anderson continued. “So this [forum] falls right within the tenants of First AME Church, this is a part of who we are as a church.”
According to Judge Johnson, the youth and law forum was founded on six principles:
• Expose community youth to community roles models who were engaged in the area of juvenile justice – criminal law, family law and related areas.
• Highlight specific behavior and responses that may yield positive or negatives consequences in any given situation out in the community, particularly as it related to interaction with police.
• Highlight preventative measures and techniques needed to avoid troublesome environments or situations in the community.
• Focus on precise, basic information — like telephone numbers of parents/relatives — that a youth or adults should have or know in the event of an emergency involving law enforcement people.
• Share thoughts on the internal investigation process of various law enforcement offices in the community.
• and encourage the youth to talk, discuss, discover for themselves answers to key questions presented as it relates to law enforcement and the criminal justice system in our community.
Today, although many of the issues that young people face are much different than they were 25 years ago, the emphasis on presenting youth with age appropriate information on the right way and the wrong way to safely interact with police and adverse situations continues to be the main goal.
Workshops in some of the early years included advice on contact with police outside of the home, juvenile court custody issues, family and domestic law considerations, and federal law and its harsh realities. Fast forward to today and the forum now features current issues that need to be addressed by youth and their parents like internet and cyber safety, gun violence, anger management, domestic violence and they even have an interactive CSI workshop that is very popular with all attendees.
The broad range of topics is not by coincidence, as organizers make sure that the workshops address current trends that are affecting young people in the community.
We’re not stuck in the past,” says McCullough. “I think it’s fair to say that as issues are presented we try to tailor each forum so that the issues can be met by our presenters for the young people and their parents who are trying to rear these young people.”
Nancy Stephens, who has chaired the program for the last 15 years, agrees and works very hard to make sure that program continues to evolve in order to meet the needs of youth and their parents in the community.
“The sessions are always different, so if you’ve been coming for 25 years you’ve had a different program and different experience each of those years,” says Stephens. “Even though it’s called the youth and law forum we do tailor things to adults as well. We also realize that some of these youth are turning 18 and are clueless about what changes are effecting them [from a legal perspective] at that age.”
Judge McCullough knows first-hand that the training sessions at the youth and law forum have benefitted many youth in that area – including his own. McCullough recalls a time when his son, who was 15 at the time, was riding in a car with one of his friends who had just turned 16 and gotten his driver’s license, when they were stopped by police. Fortunately, the youth had recently attended a youth and law forum where they discussed how to respond to police when you’re pulled over and how not to respond.
McCullough like most parents of African American youth knows that bad things can happen “when you have a car of African American kids someplace other than the CD,” and is grateful that the young men handled themselves properly and without incident.
“They got stopped on Aurora for driving too slow,” says McCullough. “Because they had this session, according to [the driver’s] mother, the teenager knew how to respond, what to expect and the mom swears that is something that has stuck with that kid [to this day].”
“All kids are at risk,” adds McCullough. “It doesn’t matter what your socio-economic status might be, you still need to know how to respond to these situations. All of these young people need to know this, and we all need to share this information.”
In addition to proving youth with valuable information, the youth and law forum has also been instrumental in desensitizing members of the criminal justice system when it comes to issues of race. Since its inception, the youth and law forum has attracted not only law enforcement officers, but prosecutors, city attorneys, the chief of police and pretty much anyone else involved in the local criminal justice system.
“One of the reasons that we have this [forum] is to dispel the notion that all of the Blacks kids and all of the brown kids are thugs and hooligans,” says McCullough. “We thought it was important for the young people to learn how to interact with police officers, but it was also important for police officers to learn how to interact with our children, so that the officers were able to see the children from the community in a different way, not just as problems.”
Judge Johnson couldn’t agree more, and believes that the one day session is probably one of the most valuable learning experiences that people from the criminal justice system can attend as it relates to race and handling racially intense situations.
“I think that because of the youth and law forum a lot of policemen know more about Blacks folks than they would have known otherwise,” says Johnson. “They have more contact with more Black people at the youth and law forum than they would have any other time in their life over the course of a year.”
“I think the youth and law forum has a big impact on how these people think and that has reduced some of the kinds of things that you’ve seen across the country,” Johnson continued. “I’m not saying that the youth and law forum will stop all of these things, no, but it does have some influence I believe in this community.”
According to organizers, the success and influence of the youth and law forum cannot be measured in terms of how many young people’s lives have been saved because that is something that we’ll probably never know or be able to quantify. But with similar events now taking place in Tacoma, Spokane, Pasco, Renton and South King County the impact of the event, and its success in reaching and educating youth, parents and law enforcement officials prove that it is an effective model that can be implemented in communities all across the country.
“As far as I know we’re one of the few communities in this country that actually engages in proactive community education,” said McCullough. “It’s something that we’ve in essence pioneered. It’s an investment in our community and it benefits all of us. If you have a healthy juvenile population it benefits the entire community.”
This year’s youth and law forum will take place on Sat., Apr. 25 from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the MLKFAME Community Center – 3201 East Republican in Seattle. The event is free and open to the public and will feature workshops for elementary, middle and high school students, as well as adults.
With this being the 25th year of the youth and law forum, organizers are planning for their largest turnout ever and hope that this year’s event will set the stage for the next 25 years.
“One of the worst things that happen to minority youth is that if you believe that law enforcement is bad, you will by default become anti-law,” says Maurice Ward, a juvenile justice program administrator with the Juvenile Justice and Rehabilitation Administration. “You will do and engage in things and believe and support things by not telling what you saw.”
“I would like to see the most at-risk kids possible [at this event] because they should be around law enforcement and law enforcement should be around them to see potential, because I think we make decisions too often not assuming that a person can change.”
While the subject matter of the youth and law forum is very serious, the information is presented in an open and fun environment. The workshops are structured not only to get youth to understand the information, but also to share it with others. And the judges involved in establishing the event, all of whom have worked in the juvenile justice system, would much rather see youth at the event than in their courtrooms.
Given the number of incidents around the country involving young people and law enforcement, organizers of the 25th annual youth and law forum believe this is an event that everyone in the community should attend, because too often our community is reactive as opposed to proactive.
“An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure any day,” concludes McCullough.
